The Delhi High Court on Friday dismissed an appeal filed by the widow of Mughal emperor Bahadur Shah Zafar II’s granddaughter to seize the capital’s Red Fort, alleging that she was the emperor’s legal heir.
A bench of Acting Chief Justice Vibhu Bakharu and Justice Tushar Rao Gadela dismissed the appeal filed by Sultana Begum against the December 2021 judgment of a single judge of the Supreme Court, noting that the challenge was filed after a delay of two-and-a-half years. Which cannot be accepted.
Begum, who is based in Howrah, near Kolkata, told The Indian Express that she first petitioned the high court in 2021 in the hope that “the government will take notice of me and help me financially”.
Begum Mirza is the widow of Bedar Bukht, who was born in 1920 in what was then Rangoon, Burma, and is the grandson of Bahadur Shah Zafar II. Bukht, who died in Kolkata in 1980, never earned a living, she said.
“We were living in Talatala and subsisting on the pension we received as the legal heirs of Bahadur Shah Zafar II, which was a few hundred rupees. In 1984, I moved to Howrah trying to raise my children alone. After he died, I used to run a tea shop and make bangles from time to time, but now I am getting old and I stay in bed most of the time,’ she added.
According to the Begum, Bukht was the last officially recognized direct male descendant of Bahadur Shah Zafar, who initially received a pension from the British. He then received a pension from the “Central Government, Nizam and Hazrat Nizamuddin Trust”, his petition said.
The Begum said that as the legal heir of Bahadur Shah Zafar II, she lived off the Rs 6,000 she received as a pension from the Hazrat Nizamuddin Trust.
Begum, who was living in a hut in Howrah, said she was in dire need of money. “I have one son and five daughters. My elder daughters died in 2022, there was a delay in filing the appeal… My children remained uneducated, none of them completed school and we live in poverty,” he added.
The Begum approached the Delhi High Court in 2021 alleging that her family was deprived of possession of the Red Fort due to the exile of Bahadur Shah Zafar II, the Emperor of Delhi from 1836 to 1857, and the illegal occupation of the Red Fort by the British. September 19, 1857. She claimed to have legally acquired the Red Fort from Bahadur Shah Zafar. II and is also entitled to compensation for alleged illegal occupation by the Union Government.
A bench of Justice Rekha Pally dismissed the petition prima facie on December 20, 2021, citing the delay of 164 years.
The court recorded, “… even if we accept the petitioner’s case that the late Bahadur Shah Zafar II was illegally deprived of his property by the East India Company, how can the writ petition be entertained after such an inordinate delay. 164 years when this is an accepted position That the petitioner’s predecessors were always aware of this position.
In November this year, Begum appealed against the 2021 order in the Division Bench and submitted that “the Central Government is in illegal possession of the Red Fort, which is the ancestral property of the appellant and the Government is not willing to give compensation or possession. Such property, which is in violation of the fundamental and constitutional rights of the petitioner. is a direct violation.”
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